Leif Wenar talks to Rosie Boycott

Blood Oil: Tyrants, Violence and the Rules That Run the World

Hay Festival 2017,
Friday 2 June 2017

Natural resources like oil and minerals are the largest source of unaccountable power in the world. Petrocrats like Putin and the Saudis spend resource money on weapons and oppression; militants in Iraq and in the Congo spend resource money on radicalisation and ammunition. Resource-fuelled authoritarians and extremists present endless crises to the West and at home. And the source of their resource power is ultimately ordinary consumers, doing their everyday shopping at the filling station and the mall. Wenar holds the Chair of Phliosophy and Law at King’s College, London.